


First Word

by gorseflower



Category: The Americans (TV 2013)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-09 23:45:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6929248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorseflower/pseuds/gorseflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For prompt: "They're not allowed to speak Russian in the US, but that doesn't stop them sometimes.</p>
<p>It can be exclusively sexual, not sexual at all, whatever--I'd just love to see the playing around a bit with their mother tongue despite the danger. (If your Russian isn't tip-top, no worries on OP's account--I can't speak Russian at all.)"<br/>http://smallfandomkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/1107.html?thread=3667#cmt3667</p>
<p>Paige won't understand Russian, but Philip and Elizabeth aren't supposed to mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Word

**Author's Note:**

> It was hard to make it shippy because of the time period, but I did what I could.

Philip strolled through the park with his hands in his pockets, his face muffled by a scarf he didn't really need in the warm American winter. Each time the path turned a corner, he took the opportunity to glance at the people around him. Other office workers on their lunch breaks. Two middle-aged women chatting loudly while their dogs ran loose over the grass. Kids, presumably bunking off school. And Elizabeth, slowly pushing a pram and, in her role as bored young mother, free to look around much more obviously than him. She stopped by a bench, lifted Paige out of the pram, and sat down with her in her lap. That was the signal: no one was watching.

Casually, Philip withdrew his hand from his pocket and dropped the false pebble containing the blueprint into the next flowerbed. With that weight off his mind, he headed over to join his wife and daughter.

"Hello, Paige," he said as he sat down. She beamed up at him and grabbed her foot.

"How's work?" asked Elizabeth.

"OK. On the phone with hotels all morning."

There was an awkward pause. One of the labradors which were chasing each other around the grass broke off from the game and wandered over to sniff the ground by the bench. Paige wriggled and reached towards it, like she always did when she saw a dog.

"She's fearless," Philip said. "Do you like the doggie?"

Elizabeth frowned slightly as she always did at baby-talk, but she patted the dog and got its attention so Paige could look at it.

"Dog!" said Paige happily. Philip and Elizabeth looked at each other in surprise.

"That's a new one," he said.

"Her first word."

"Her third, you mean. She's been saying 'mama' and 'dada' for weeks."

"Those don't count. All babies say them."

She sounded sad, and Philip suddenly guessed why. He looked around to make sure no one was in earshot, then leaned close and said softly.

"Paige, sobaka."

The vowels came out long and American, and he found himself disturbed by the sound of his own voice. He tried the word again, on its own.

"Sobaka."

This time it came out right, but there was something incongruous about hearing it here. It meant the stray dogs there had been in Tobolsk, not at all like the lively American doggie with its glossy thick coat. His cousin had said "Keep away, they bite." Except she'd said it in Russian, of course.

"What are you doing?" Elizabeth hissed.

"Don't you want her to hear it once, before she can tell the difference? Say something."

She didn't say anything, but she didn't bring up the rules or the Center or their mission either. She just held Paige closer.

"Dog!" Paige wailed again as the labrador bounded off back to its owner. Elizabeth rocked her soothingly.

"He wasn't bothering you, was he?" called the dog's owner as she approached and put it back on its lead. Philip shook his head and smiled broadly, and she smiled back at the pretty American family.

"What was your first word?" he asked when she'd gone.

"I don't know. Probably 'mama'. It's too late to ask now."

This was just what the orphaned Elizabeth Jennings might have said, but Philip knew he was glimpsing the Russian woman whose name he still didn't know.

"Do you miss her?"

Elizabeth's expression turned hard and closed-off. "Don't," she said. "It's against the rules."

"You can trust me..."

"What do you expect me to do when you say something like that?"

Philip had expected pretty much this, but sometimes when they were with Paige he hoped there might be more. Clearly he'd gone a step too far.

"I don't expect anything," he said bitterly. He looked at his watch -- almost time to go back to work, talk and joke in English with the clients and colleagues who'd remember him as an American if he was ever investigated, and push the past to the back of his mind, where he almost never thought of it.

"Do you ever feel like you're forgetting it? The language, I mean."

"We're supposed to forget it," Elizabeth replied. After a moment she added firmly "No. I don't think you can."

"It'll come in useful when she's older," he said. "Think of all the things we won't want to discuss in front of her."

Elizabeth stared at him in disbelief.

"That was a joke," he added, and she laughed belatedly.

"I have to get back to work. See you tonight."

He kissed Paige on the forehead and then kissed Elizabeth on the cheek. Sometimes he could feel her shrink away when he did that, so slightly that no one watching would notice, but this time she didn't. It was progress of a sort.


End file.
